Lynne Roberts-Goodwin

EXHIBITIONS

MORE THAN EVER 2012–2014 The artist Lynne Roberts-Goodwin’s current series of work, MORE THAN EVER2012–2014 series of photographic and video work, speculates on the diverse and contradictory imagining and imaging of disappearance and loss within landscape and it’s iconic representation as carrier of perhaps our deepest and most culturally specific values, actions and potent consequences. Central and key works spanning two years comprise selected works from the ‘SWARM Think the Mountain’ and ‘as the sky falls’ series to the recent ‘change of plan’ series. These works intend to reverberate and articulate a contentious hard-wired propensity for the adoration and representation of nature within cultures cited along key ancient trade routes, deeply marked by environmental and geopolitical crisis and identified at times as estranging and unsettling. The works challenge the concept of imaging the psychologically imagined and experienced space aerially, intending to engage conceptually with refiguring cultural topographies of landscape coupled and aligned with avian migration and trade routes. Roberts-Goodwin, having undertaken the 2012 AUSCO supported ‘SWARM’ project, (from whic h ‘THINK THE MOUNTAIN’ and ‘as sky FALLS’ are a central part), of imaging the avian flight of black ravens in high altitude habitats of Central Iran, Mexico, U.S.A and India, completed the series of imagery, working at 3,084 feet, on the Buffavento Kalesi (Defier of Winds) ‘Five Fingers’ Mountain Peak of the Beşparmaklar Mountain Range, Northern Cyprus, a key area traversed by the Frankincense Trade Route. The legend behind the eccentric naming of ‘Five Fingers’ Mountain dates back to the Byzantine periods where the hero named Diogenes jumped onto the island of Cyprus from Asia Minor in order to escape the Arabian pursuers, and in doing so, leaving the markings of his fingers on the Beşparmak Mountains. The topographical landscape/mountain/aerial imagery within the photographic series takes the agency of weightlessness and disorientation as a key factor in rendering the imagery paradoxically anchored for the spectator, intending to create false, desirable yet destabilising positioning. It is within contested landscapes, those constrained to invisible borders through which layers of geographic and geomorphic tableaus play out and within which narratives of migration, exile and the reverberation of aftermath are revealed. MORE THAN EVER2012–2014 connects key issues of visually & textually confounding place & presence within landscape, evoking anxious forgetting, fading thoughts, reclamation and the poignant stillness, strangeness and wonder of the unwritten bodies and vistas of topological presence invisibly tracing the contemporary presence of the ancient trade route sites with aligned migration. MORE THAN EVER2012–2014 exhibition coincides with the launch and publication of the artist Lynne Roberts-Goodwin’s monograph of photographic works of the series in conjunction with writing by Dr. Veronica Tello. This project has been assisted by the Australian Government through the Australian Council, its arts funding and advisory body. [ Catalogue: More Than Ever ]